Precarious At Best
by sono spiacente
Summary: Mello/Near ჯ A rhythm, a pattern, the thump-thump of your heartbeat.


**Author's Note:** Just a shoutout to _Rinna-kun_ (rinnakins on LJ) for the part that her Mello played in the spawning of this fic. As usual, I claim no ownership and I don't profit from these characters, just using them for my own slightly perverse fun.

* * *

Near's nineteen now, and hardly a kid anymore, having long since lost the baby fat, the youthful curve of his limbs. He's nineteen, but there's something about his fingertips that is childishly hesitant as he traces the edges of Mello's scar, something quiet and naïve about the reverence with which he touches the damaged skin. His hands are cold, and Mello shudders beneath them.

"Coulda warned me," Mello says, but there's no real reproach in his voice, and so Near does not remove his fingers.

Near says, "I'm sorry," says, "Does it hurt?" And his voice is as quiet as his touch.

Mello shakes his head and refuses to meet Near's eyes. "No," he replies. "Not at all."

***

It was the third day after Mello got on the bus that would take him away from Wammy's House that Near fell asleep on the floor for the first time. It was strange, even to him, but there was something hollow and echoing about the endless tiled halls of the mansion without Mello's presence to fill them, and something strange about his bed when Wammy's no longer felt like home.

And it wasn't as though he meant to. It was just that he was comfortable where he was, curled up on the rug in the center of the room, and the next time he'd been aware of himself it was morning and the sun was shining in on him through the curtains on his window.

Unintentional it may have been, but Near would refuse to sleep in beds for the next several years.

***

"Only when there's pressure on it," is Mello's response. "Itches like fuck sometimes."

And Near doesn't have anything to say to that, so he presses the flat of his palm against the rough surface of the scar, feeling it shift with Mello's muscles beneath his skin. It's warm, warmer than the average human skin, and Near presses his unoccupied palm against Mello's other shoulder to test his hypothesis. He proves himself correct.

There is silence, now, and Near traces the bumps of vertebrae in Mello's spine, follows the line of the scar to where it disappears into the hair at the nape of Mello's neck. When there is no more for him to investigate, he drops his hands.

"Is that all?" Mello asks. Near doesn't answer.

***

Near does not have many memories of the years before he was brought – or taken – to Wammy's. The few memories he does have are sensory perception, warm hands on his forehead, the sensation of hair tickling his face, the scratchiness of a blanket being pulled up around him. Nothing is concrete, no one single image that he can hold on to and describe.

But there is one. A single memory, from so long ago, of a kiss to a nameless hurt that he had acquired – a scraped knee, likely, or a paper cut. And after the gesture, the feeling of contentment, even though the ache of the hurt place had hardly been diminished. "Kissing it better," wasn't that what parents called it?

Near has never kissed anyone.

***

"Dear Mello," Near murmurs, and he knows that he's standing too close by the way that goosebumps rise on Mello's skin at the breath he exhales.

"What," Mello says, a touch of apprehension coloring his voice.

There were no words behind the statement, really. Near presses his fingers once more to the edge of the bruise, then replaces them, hesitantly, with his lips. It feels strange and almost uncomfortably intimate, and presumptuous, because in truth Near has no right to touch Mello the way he's doing. And yet – yet, Mello does not push him away, and so Near stays, his lips pressed to Mello's shoulder and his eyes closed.

"What are you doing?" Mello asks, after a moment.

"Nothing," Near says, as Mello turns to face him. They are breathing the other's air, invading the other's personal space. "It's just – "

"…Just?"

Near understands that sometimes there are not words for things. It is a recent revelation for him, and he still treads shakily upon it. But now, right now, he looks at Mello and tells him, with as much honesty as he can find in himself, "I don't know. I'm going to kiss you now, because I can't do anything else."

***

They never speak of the incident again. They do not touch – they do not share glances that acknowledge a common link. Mello hates Near and Near accepts it, and Near outsmarts Mello and Mello does not accept it but understands it to be the status quo, which must be maintained. There is a curious balance between them, there always has been. They are precarious at best, and Near understands something now: Mello thrives on uncertainty and chaos, and Near himself does not. And regardless of all else, at the end of everything, it will be Mello with his toes over the edge of the cliff, arms open into the wind, and Near who stands back on safe ground and calls for Mello to step back from the ledge.

And that will be all.


End file.
